Monday December 2, 1996. Mid Afternoon. Andre DeVries private residence.

Harry, Snape, and DeVries appeared on the now familiar Apparation Platforms. Unlike the ones Harry had seen so far, though, the one he now found himself on was quite ornate. Rather than being made of sterile-looking slabs of stone laid with greyish mortar and with nought but precisely scribed runes as decoration, the small apparating platform outside Andre Devries house was decorated with a green mosaic of malachite, green agates, and other semi precious stones arranged in a fanciful snake motif. The gems sparkled and shone in the bright afternoon sunlight, and Harry found himself admiring them. The luxurious construction of the platform brought to mind the fanciful, old fashioned wizarding world he was familiar with from Hogwarts and other places in England, rather than the sterile, modern ideas of craftsmanship that he had thus far associated with the Gibsonites. Completing the nearly faery-like structure was an 8 foot tall filigreed structure of antique bronze containing a small bell. A small sign near it instructed any visitors to ring the bell and wait to be escorted off the platform. Surrounding the circumferance of the platform was a small moat, complete with lily pads. An arched stone bridge that would not have been out of place in Hogwarts itself led over it onto a path that led to Andre's house.

"This must have cost a bloody fortune!" He said admiringly to DeVries, who just chuckled.

"I can afford it. The parselmouth business pays quite well here. And I like nice things. I see no reason not to have anything I want, so long as I can pay for it." He stepped onto the bridge, and suddenly the surface of the moat, which Harry had thought was purely decorative began to roil, and a thick column of dripping scales reared upwards from it.

And up, and up, and up, until looming nearly 6 feet taller than Harry's head was a serpent that seemed nearly as large as the basilisk that he had fought in his second year. Or at least that was the impression a frightened Harry got. The truth was it was actually far smaller, being a natural creature rather than a magical one. It was large enough though. Over 30 feet long.

Alarmed, Harry stumbled back involuntarily, bumping into Professor Snape, and nearly knocking him off the edge of the platform.

"Watch where you're going Potter!" Snape snarled, seeming not alarmed at all by the giant serpent.

"Don't be afraid, Harry." Andre said. "That's just Shantih. One of my numerous serpents that I keep around here."

"That's a bloody big snake!" Harry said. "For a moment I thought it was a basilisk. But I suppose if it were, we'd all be dead."

"No, Shantih's an anaconda." DeVries said. "They don't normally get quite this big, but I've done a bit of transfiguration work on her. She spends a lot of time coiled around the platform here. If anyone comes who doesn't want to ring the bell like a proper polite visitor, she coils around them and keeps them in one spot until I can come sort them out. Saved my life more than once..."

"Down, Shantih," Andre hissed in Parselmouth. As the snake obeyed, sinking most of her length back into the moat, he reached out and patted her on the head. "Had a werewolf try and attack me once, a long time ago. I think it worked for you-know-who. The local werewolves wouldn't pull a stunt like that. Well, Shanti here wrapped around him and kept him from going anywhere. Strong creatures, snakes. Pound for pound they're about the strongest thing there is. Not being made out of silver, Shantih couldn't kill him, of course. But the werewolf couldn't unwrap Shanti from around himself either. And his teeth and claws didn't do him much good when he couldn't move."

"So what happened?" Harry said, rather interested in the story. He had never heard of fighting a werewolf with anything other than silver. The Gibsonites seemed to have some eccentric, yet very effective ways of dealing with certain things that could be extremely useful.

"Oh," DeVries waved his hand vaguely, leading Harry and Snape towards his house. "I came out to see what all the noise was about. I didn't really want to deal with a hungry werewolf, so I just told Shantih to stay wrapped around him until morning, when he changed back. Then I asked him some questions, but I didn't much like his answers. So I had some Justicars pick him up. They poured veritaserum down his throat, and asked him some questions. Turned out he was from Durmstrang, but a sympathizer with you-know-who. Apparently he felt that it wasn't appropriate for a parselmouth to 'waste' his talents making money instead of joining you-know-who and telling snakes to go around attacking people. So he came here to try and kill me."

"What did the Justicars do to him?" Harry asked.

"Oh. Well in Gibson, the specified penalty for murder or attempted murder is to become the property either of your would-be victim, or his heirs, if the attempt succeeded. So the Justicars gave him back to me. I didn't have much use for him. I suppose I could have fed him to Shantih, but she probably would have gotten a bellyache. And selling him as slave labor was more trouble than it was worth. So I gave him to the Jean Grenoir society. I imagine they probably tore him to peices."

Tore him to peices? Harry shuddered. That did not sound at all good, despite what the werewolf had tried to do. "What's the Jean Grenoir society?" He asked.

"You don't know what that is?" DeVries seemed a little surprised. "I forget, you're not a Gibson. The Jean Grenoir society is sort of a union for werewolves here. They charge dues, and provide certain benefits for their members, like making bulk purchases of wolfsbane potion, and operate warded off hunting preserves full of game for those members who prefer to hunt. They also arrange certain employment opportunities unique to werewolves."

Harry frowned at this. "What sort of job would someone want a werewolf for? Forgive me for asking, but in England, it's nearly impossible for werewolves to get any sort of job at all. People are afraid of them."

"Hmm. People are fools. There's no such thing as perfect safety. So long a werewolf takes care to either isolate themselves or take the Wolfsbane potion, they're fine. And when they're on Wolfsbane potion, if they play their cards right, they can get quite a lot of money." He tapped his nose. "It's their noses. They got a sniffer like a bloodhound. The Justicars will pay a lot to get a pack of werewolves on wolfsbane. They can sniff out a criminal almost every time. If they catch the right criminals, they can earn enough percentage on the bounties in only two or three nights of work every month that they don't have to work at all for the rest of the month if they don't want to."

"And you say that these union werewolves ripped apart the one who attacked you?" Harry said. "I'm surprised they didn't protect him."

"Oh, hell, that's the last thing they'd do." Andre snorted. "They got a sweet deal here. Better than anywhere else in the world. The last thing in the world they'd want is a werewolf who's irresponsible or criminal giving the rest of them a bad reputation. They police themselves quite strictly, believe me."

By now they had approached Andre's house which, although not as ornate as his Apparating platform, was comfortingly old fashioned. Harry could almost imagine the Weasleys living in such a house, were they to emigrate here. Several bushy trees surrounded it, no doubt to shade it from a sun that could be all too harsh at these latitudes. The walls were made of thick, curved adobe, set with countless windows of stained glass. The latter seemed to be enchanted, just as the pictures were at Hogwarts, as Harry could vaguely see movement in them. But from this angle he could not see what they depicted, merely that they were quite large and colorful. One one side of the house was a gaily striped green and silver awning with a large, cherry red flying carpet resting beneath it, and behind the house Harry could see a large white watertank standing on high legs. Off to one side, Harry saw three young children playing a game that seemed to involve tossing a large ball around a smooth feild with several polished granite stones, approximately the size of their heads, and carved in the form of the six Platonic solids. Andre whistled at them, and they looked up and waved back, shouting excited greetings to their father.

The large anaconda, Shantih, had followed them all the way from the moat, as if to make sure that the two strangers meant no harm to his master. Now DeVries gazed intently at the serpent for a long moment, and it turned and slithered back towards the water.

"Err, did you just tell her to leave?" Harry said curiously. "I didn't hear you talk to her."

"Oh, that's right. You are a Parselmouth like me. Dumbledore mentioned that. Well, you must realize that the Parselmouth ability is actually mainly telepathic in nature. Speaking out loud is not, strictly speaking, necessary."

"It isn't?" Harry tried to digest this. "I've always had to. And so has Voldemort."

"Well, you-know-who was always a great fool. But think about it, Harry. Snakes are deaf-mutes. They don't have eardrums, or vocal cords. What you think you speak and hear aloud to a snake is actually entirely in your mind. Your voice and ears a just the mechanism you use to utilize that ability. But with enough practice, you no longer need them."

"Oh, like silent magic!" Harry smiled brightly as he comprehended. "I'm not much good at that, though. I'm surprised that Voldemort still needs to talk out loud to his snakes, though. He's good at silent magic."

"I doubt Voldemort is capable of understanding that it's not necessary." Andre said. "He is blind in many ways. To him, a snake is a weapon of terror, not an animal. As such he concentrates on little other than telling it to spy on people or attack them. Certain not on their anatomy and senses."

They entered Andre's house, and Harry found himself in a large, spacious living room. Now that he was inside the house, he could see the moving pictures on two of the magical stained glass windows that were set into the wall. One of them showed a picture of the three fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, whose magically animated images were busily spinning, measuring, and cutting threads, respectively. The other showed an adorably cute koala bear clambering around a tree and plucking glass leaves which it stuffed into it's pink glass mouth. The two multicolored windows cast cool, rainbow light around the large room which had several green velvet sofas scattered around in a vague semi-circle facing the lit fireplace. There was a boy sitting on one of them idly levitating a small marble with a wand. A peice of parchment lay on a low table near him.

"Ah, Wilhelm." Andre said. "Did you do well at your lessons this morning?"

The boy jumped up, smiling. "Yes, papa!"

"Let me see." Andre picked up the parchment and scanned it briefly. "This all looks good, especially the part where you compared Roman numerals to traditional runes. You'll be ahead of the game when you go to Gibson Academy next year. Now go run out and see if you can find a couple of the taipans. There's been a dingo sniffing around lately, see if they can bite him. Shantih can eat him if they do, it'll save buying another sheep for her."

The boy ran out of the house, and Harry heard some sibilant hissing, and some words about how any good snakes that wanted some rats should come on over, before the thick door slammed shut and cut off the rest of what Wilhelm was saying.

"Sit down, Harry." Andre urged. "You've probably had a tiring day, coming all the way out here from England."

Harry was happy to obey. He was glad that the time here was eight or so hours ahead of England, it hopefully meant that he would get to bed, earlier. He had not gotten any sleep in... he was not sure how long it had been. Nearly two days. Since he had been knocked unconscious during Richthoven's fight with Voldemort. Far too long. It seemed like nearly an eternity.

Harry sat back in a comfortable green couch. The change in position brought back the ringing in his head, however. He raised one hand to his temple, trying to rub the noise away.

"Are you alright, Harry?" DeVries asked, concern written on his face.

"I'm fine." Harry said. "It's just this funny noise I've got in my head, ever since we came here through the freight portal. It doesn't hurt, exactly, but it's kind of weird. I can't seem to get rid of it."

"Ah." Andre nodded knowing. "A lot of people get that, first time they get apparated by a Gibsonite. Nothing to worry about."

"What causes it?" Harry said. "The trip was alright, it was actually easier than any other time I apparated. But the noise is so weird."

"I'm not sure." DeVries shrugged as he sat down. "My understanding is that the Apparators here approach apparating a little bit differently then they do elsewhere. They claim that they don't apparate objects so much as they apparate the space that the objects occupy. I asked them about it once, and got a horribly complicated explanation that I couldn't begin to understand. All I got out of it was that apparently what we regard as distance between objects is not necessarily fixed, and very much a product of our own point of view, and also that what we would normally regard as empty space is not at all empty, but actually something in itself, containing potential for many things, such as the ability to contain matter and energy, and the laws of magic and physics. The apparators compare it to the spaces on a chessboard. You have to have a space on a chessboard in order for a chess peice to be placed. You can't just place it anywhere, where there is no chessboard space to put it."

"Anyway, the upshot of all this, is that the first time you get apparated by one of our Guild members, the new experience tends to affect your senses for a while. Make you more sensitive to space and the other dimensions around you. It's nothing to worry about, although you might have strange dreams for a few nights. Some seers swear by being apparated through one of our freight portals to give them more accurate prophecies." he chuckled, showing how little he thought of that idea, and after a moment, Harry joined him. He could just imagine Professor Trelawney going through a freight portal and then predicting the death of one of the Apparators who had sent her. And what the response of those rough wizards was likely to be.

"But where are my manners?" Andre looked over at Snape, who was sitting stiffly in what looked like the least comfortable chair in the room. "Let me get you something, Severus."

He got up, took a large jug of wine from a table by the wall, and poured a glass of thick liquid so red that it was nearly black. He handed it to Snape. The potions master sniffed at the glass, and apparently liked it somewhat, because Harry actually saw a small smile on his face as he sipped at it.

Just then a woman wearing a short, green silk tunic came in.

"Susan!" Andre smiled broadly at her, and greeted here with a long, passionate kiss, making Harry flush. "Harry, this is my wife, Susan. Sue, this is Harry Potter. He's come from England. He'll be staying with us for the night."

DeVrie's wife smiled at him in a way that made Harry feel uncomfortably warm. "I'm quite pleased to meet you, Harry."

"Go get us some hot mochk." Andre said. "Make it nice and thick. Harry needs something to tide him over until supper. He's a growing boy."

"I'll heat it right up, Andre." Susan said. "It'll be maybe about 10 minutes."

"Excellent." Andre waited until she had left the room, then looked at Harry intently for several seconds.

"So." He finally said. "Dumbledore said that I need to send you off to Wilson. Because she's the only one who can protect you from Richthoven. The Apparator. That's all a bad business, that is. I haven't heard word of Richthoven in a very long time, and I had hoped to have never heard of it again. Not after what he's become. He's nothing like the man I knew once."

"You knew Richthoven?" Harry said. "What do you know about him."

Andre didn't say anything for a very long time. He got up and paced, then turned back to Harry.

"Michael Von Richthoven. Also known as Richthoven the Apparator. Also known as Richthoven the Torturer, Richthoven the Flayer, and Richthoven the Unholy." He gave Harry a small, apologetic smile. "As you can see, we think quite a lot of him. Though he was not always like the... thing you met. Time was he was my friend. It was him that got me out of England, you know. He and a few other Gibsons talked me into coming here, rather than joining you-know who. Best decision of my life. Of course, that was before he went crazy. We don't like to think about that, down here, you know. About the things that he does now. We read about people being tortured, or hear about it. And we know it's him. But we still don't like to think or talk about it. It's almost unbearable, a man like that, being reduced to what he is now."

Harry opened his mouth, then noticed Snape looking sharply at him over the rim of his wine glass. He remembered the professor's warning not to discuss what had become of Richthoven's wife. "A man like what? What was he like?"

"He was a prince." Andre smiled. "Well, not literally, of course. But probably the closest thing to nobility that we ever had. The Apparators are the best people here, you know. Gibson Academy itself started out as an apparator's school, 200 years ago. And Richthoven was the best of the Apparators. Incredible, the things he could do. The youngest wizard ever to become head of the Apparators guild. He was a hero. He led the other Apparators to destroy the Death Eaters when they attacked the academy."

"I saw that." Harry said. "Dumbldedore had a memory of it, that he showed me in a pensieve. It was pretty disgusting. They killed people who were trying to get away, and surrender. That wasn't right."

Andre shrugged. "They did what they had to do. And it was effective. What would you have had them do? Turn them over to your English aurors?"

"Well, that would have been more fair. They could have gotten a fair trial."

DeVries gave a Snape-worthy sneer. "A fair trial that would have resulted in half of them escaping or being given a slap on the wrist, and the other half having their soul sucked out by Dementors. Neither one would appropriate. Particularly the latter."

"I've heard that about you Gibsonites," Harry said. "That you don't like Dementors. But don't you think that some people deserve it, especially murderers like the Death Eaters? After all, they did attack your school and try to kill helpless little kids."

"That's true, they did." DeVries said. "But the problem with what you propose is that the things the death eaters do, murder, torture, and rape, as horrible as they are, are ultimately, crimes that are limited, or finite in nature. What you propose, feeding people's souls to the dementors is an infinite punishment, the denial of an eternal afterlife. The application of an infinite punishment for a finite crime is entirely inappropriate. And what if the murderer is sorry? Or might be sorry someday?"

"Some people are never going to be sorry." Harry said. "They laugh about killing and torturing people. You don't live in England, you haven't seen the Death Eaters. I have. They'll never be sorry."

Andre stopped pacing, and stared into the flickering flames in his fireplace for several long moments. He looked at Snape for a while, who did not seem to want to face him, then looked back at the fire, as if gazing at an infernal vision only he could see. When he turned back to face Harry, there were tears glistening in his eyes.

"How do you know, Potter? Are you a God?"

"No." Harry said in a small voice, not sure how to take tears in an adult man.

"Then how do you know? Not being a God, Harry, you lack the two requisite qualities that would give you a right to destroy someone else's soul. Namely omniscience, and infallibility." He pointed at Harry. "All you see, when you would condemn someone to the Dementors, is someone who is cruel and frightening, now. But how do you know what will eventually happen? When they die, and are in a hell of their own making for a thousand years, or ten thousand, then how do you know that they might not see? Might not repent?"

"I don't know." Harry said. "I never really thought about it that way."

Andre shook his head. "That's the whole trouble with English wizards. They never think about what should be obvious. You're a wizard Harry. As such, you can see ghosts. So you KNOW people have immortal souls. You have PROOF, right in front of your eyes. Every wizard does. Yet what do the English wizards do? They completely ignore the evidence of their senses, and do things like trying to make themselves immortal. Like you-know who. Which has got to be the stupidest thing I ever heard of. He is not going to live forever in this world, regardless of what he thinks, since for among other reasons, in several billion years the sun is going to explode. Long before that time, natural evolution of other species will have rendered him about as relevent as a dinosaur."

"As for me," DeVries continued, "I prefer to eventually be safe in heaven enjoying eternal life, rather than enduring some protracted but finite existence on Earth, where I will first be obsolete, and then get to witness the sun turning into a red giant. Every Gibsonite does. It's one reason why we don't permit dementors here. Their use is not only unjust, but dangerous. One single slip in controlling them, and the next thing you know, they've gone off and sucked out some innocent person's soul, destroying life eternal for them. I can't think of any crime so horrible, any revenge I would want so badly, that I would risk having such a thing as a dementor anywhere near me, if there were as little as 1 one-millionth of a chance they would get loose and destroy my own soul, my own chance for immortality."

"Think, Harry." he told the boy. "Once you die, you'll be re-united in heaven with everyone who may have been murdered on Earth. In a thousand years, you'll likely no longer care about how they died. In ten thousand years, you'll likely have completely forgotten about it. But what you will never forget about, I can promise you, is if you ever fed another person's soul to the Dementors. Denied another human soul their chance at eternity and redemption. The guilt of such an act will be with you forever, I promise you. The very knowledge of it will poison your entire existence in eternity. Which, to my mind, is a good working definition of Hell itself."

Harry's mind whirled. "I don't know. I can't just forget about the things that Voldemort and his followers have done. They killed my parents. And my friends."

"Then don't forget it." Andre said. "Never do that. But don't give them to the Dementors, either. You'll damn yourself along with them."

DeVries shook his head. "But enough of that. I don't even like talking about Dementors. Here, let me show you a memory of mine. Perhaps it will help you to understand Richthoven a bit better. To see why everyone here used to look up to him."

He went over to a small copper and glass shelf that was in one corner of the room and removed a small pensieve. Then he took his wand and began removing a memory from his head, wrapping the silver thought stuff around his wand.

"This is a speech Richthoven made." Andre explained. "Shortly after the Death Eaters destroyed Gibson Academy. Everyone here was feeling pretty dismal about it. But he straightened us all out. I was there. It was amazing, really. You'll see."

He finished putting the silvery thoughts into the pensieve. "You should look at this too, Severus. I think it will do you good."

Harry was puzzled by what could ever do Snape any good, but said nothing. He waited as the Potion's master finished draining his glass of dark wine, and then joined them by the Pensieve. As soon as they were ready, all three of them joined hands and an excited, yet fearful Harry plunged into DeVries memories of a time over 15 years in the past.